Grime Read Free

look like,
but I can see what it's doing to hers. The laughter stops, her lips
draw thin. For a moment I just want to put my arm around her. But I
don’t. Instead I just walk past her and go back inside.
    From the amount of shit in the trailer and
the yard you’d think it would look a lot better, but the living
room is still a mess. The wall Val was working her way across is
okay, but we’ve hardly put a dent in the rest.
    “Where the hell is Gwen?” Jamie asks from
behind me.
    “She texted me -” I check my phone “- about
an hour ago. Said she’s on her way.”
    I can practically hear Jamie’s eyes rolling.
She steps around me and surveys the room. “I think it’ll help if we
get all the big furniture out. It will at least make it easier to
get around in here.”
    Another hour later and the furniture is all
cleared away. I’ve managed to convince Jamie and Val to put a
bookcase and a couple of chairs on the charity pile, but I have to
admit they’re right about the rest. The sofa is stained and lumpy,
and the frame has come loose in one arm. The coffee table is coated
with a quarter inch of gummy sludge, hundreds or maybe thousands of
spilled glasses of rotgut that were never wiped up. Nobody in their
right mind would want this shit.
    The room does look a bit better. There’s
still stuff everywhere - books and magazines and old plastic food
containers, shoeboxes full of dead batteries, piles and piles of
papers.
    Jamie produces some bungee ties from the
truck, and we strap the towering load of trash bags and junk
furniture in the trailer down as best we can to make the first trip
to the dump.
    “You two go,” Val says. “I’ll stay here and
keep working.” She lights another Newport and sucks it in with her
eyes closed while we climb into the cab and pull away. Jamie
drives.
    We’re not in the car ten seconds before she
asks, “So how bad is it?”
    “How bad is what?”
    “You and Ben.”
    “I told you, it’s good.”
    “Yeah. You told me. Three times. You said
‘good’ three times in the first two seconds after I asked you.”
    “Because things are triple good.”
    “You’re a terrible liar.”
    I know I am. But I don’t want to get into it.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure our load is still secure.
Jamie’s GPS helpfully suggests she turn right in 200 feet. “You
still working at that ad agency?”
    “It was never an ad agency, it was in-house
marketing for an architecture firm. And yes, I’m still there. But I
don’t want to talk about work.”
    “What do you want to talk about then?”
    “Mom.”
    “Jesus fuck, Jamie. Why?”
    “Because it beats talking about Dad. And I
don’t see how much longer we can avoid talking about either of
them, considering the only reason we’re even seeing each other is
because we’re cleaning out his house.”
    I groan. “What, so we’ve gotta stretch out on
the couch and air our grievances? They’re both dead. Fine. It’s
over. It’s not like either one of them have been a part of our
lives for a long time.”
    “Oh, that’s healthy.”
    “Well, what exactly is it you want me to
say?”
    “I don’t know. Anything.” We hit a red light
and she looks over at me. “You never say anything. Even when we
were kids. You just talk and talk and don’t say anything.”
    “Okay, so what is it you want to say? You
want to talk about Mom, you say something.”
    The light turns green. She hits the gas a
little too hard, and the big diesel engine snorts. “Sometimes I
think I’m turning into her.”
    “You’re not.”
    “How would you know? You barely know me.”
    She’s right, of course, but I lie to her
anyway. “I know you well enough to know you’re not Mom.”
    “Greg’s fucking around.”
    “I thought you weren’t with him anymore.”
    “We’ve been off and on for four years, and
he’s been fucking around for all of it.”
    “So stay off this time.”
    “I know.” Her voice has gone flat. “I should,
but I won’t.